Research On The Effect Of Dual-Coding-Theory-Based English Teaching On High School Students' Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary learning is an essential part of second language acquisition.Vocabulary serves as the core of any specific linguistic system and is of great importance to all language learners. Compared with the traditional vocabulary teaching model, the new vocabulary teaching model used in the experiment is based on dual coding theory. To be specific, dual-coding-theory-based teaching model emphasizes the function of human's non-verbal system which specialized in dealing with non-linguistic information. In this model, teachers will choose different solutions to stimulate students' non-verbal system and help them generate corresponding image.Dual coding theory claims that through verbal and nonverbal stimuli from the outsider world, the joint operation of human's verbal and non-verbal system can facilitate students' memorization. In the past, some researchers applied dual coding theory in first and second language teaching. And after their study, the effectiveness of applying dual coding theory in language teaching has been recognized by more and more people. This research has the following significance. Firstly, with Allen Paivio's dual coding theory introduced in the thesis, the readers could get a better understanding of human's memorization process. Secondly, the experiment conducted by the author testified the effectiveness of application of dual coding theory in vocabulary teaching which could give readers some useful implications.This research mainly makes an exploration of dual coding theory and its application in vocabulary teaching in high school. To be specific, in this research, the author intends to find the answers to the following questions. 1) Can the dual-coding-theory-based vocabulary teaching model enhance students' vocabulary memorization? 2) Can the dual-coding-theory-based vocabulary teaching model improve students' interest in vocabulary learning? The chosen subjects in this study are two classes in Grade One in a high school. There are 91 students involved in this experiments which last around a semester. Students in EG were taught through dual-coding-theory-based model which emphasizes the importance of nonverbal system, while those in CG were taught through traditional model.After analyzing the data of the vocabulary level test, immediate test, the delayed test as well as the questionnaire, we can get the conclusion that the DCT-based teaching model can improve senior high school students' vocabulary memorization and enhance their interest in vocabulary learning.